Ex-cop accused of murder plot back in restrictive custody

Mandell's attorneys say prosecutors gave no reason for security change

August 14, 2013|By Jason Meisner, Chicago Tribune reporter

Steven Mandell (Terrence Antonio James, Chicago Tribune)

Less than two months ago, a former Chicago police officer awaiting trial in a bizarre plot to murder and dismember a local businessman pleaded in court to be let out of restrictive custody at the downtown federal jail.

"I will not embarrass this court," a frail-looking Steven Mandell, 63, vowed in late June after a judge ordered him back into the jail's general population despite the concerns of prosecutors that an informant could be at risk.

Now Mandell, who also faces charges in two additional murder plots, has been mysteriously placed back in the Special Housing Unit of the Metropolitan Correctional Center, where detainees are held in solitary confinement for up to 23 hours a day and given limited contact with visitors and other inmates.

In a court filing Wednesday, Mandell's attorneys said prosecutors refused to disclose the reason for the sudden security change.

"Counsel wishes to pursue this matter and needs to know the basis for the defendant's return to SHU in order to determine whether an appropriate motion need be filed," the filing said.

Randall Samborn, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office, declined to comment.

It was the latest in a series of strange developments in the case that unfolded in October when federal agents arrested Mandell and an alleged accomplice as they prepared to abduct a businessman from a Northwest Side realty office, authorities said. Prosecutors alleged that Mandell and Gary Engel planned to take the victim to a nearby vacant office space they referred to in undercover recordings as Club Med, extort him of his cash, force him to sign over his real estate holdings, then kill and dismember him.

After his arrest, Mandell, who once went by the name Steven Manning, spent more than eight months in the SHU, but the conditions aggravated his heart disease and diabetes, according to his attorneys.

In lifting the restrictive custody, U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve said she heard no evidence that Mandell had tried to contact the informant in his case and noted that Mandell's medical issues had worsened during his time in restrictive custody. The judge, though, barred Mandell from using the jail's email system or trying to persuade other inmates to send messages on his behalf.

Mandell was sent to death row for the 1990 slaying of a truck driver, but his murder conviction was overturned on appeal. Mandell sued the FBI for framing him, winning a landmark $6.5 million in damages from a federal jury. However, a judge later threw out the award, so he never saw a penny.